Speed bump controversy: Actibumps or acti-accidents?

In case you live under a very large rock and are unaware, Curtin recently installed a brand new Swedish innovation in traffic management known as Actibumps.

The first reports of traffic management come from New Jersey, USA in 1906 where the town of Chatham planned to raise their crosswalks five inches above the surrounding road. It wasn’t until 1956 that speedbumps were first “invented” and subsequently implemented. The man credited for first inventing speed bumps was Arthur Holly Compton.

Compton was the Chancellor of Washington University and it was here that he noticed the elevated speeds of drivers around campus. As a result, Compton designed “traffic control bumps” in an attempt to lower the average speed of motorists.

With the speed bump now being implemented widely across the globe, some companies, like Edeva, are looking for new and improved traffic management solutions. Edeva’s Actibump was created in 2009 and the first unit was installed in Linköping, Sweden in 2010. There are currently 35 units installed worldwide—four of which are installed in Australia, all at Curtin University.

Image: Edeva

As the name implies, Actibumps are only activated when a car is travelling above the posted speed limit. As a vehicle approaches the Actibump, a radar detector picks up the speed of the vehicle and relays this to the control unit which determines whether the Actibump should be actuated or not.

At Curtin, if the vehicle’s speed is above the 40km/h limit the bump is lowered, effectively creating an inverted speed bump. Else if the speed is below the limit of 40km/h, the bump is not lowered and the vehicle may safely pass over the Actibump.

It is reported on the Curtin website that the impact of the Actibump on a vehicle is the same as that of a regular speed bump. However, potholes in the road are capable of causing damage to the suspension components in vehicles, so time will tell if these new speed bumps will cause any damage to vehicles travelling above the speed limit.Below are some confessions from the Confessions at Curtin Facebook page, illustrating what the general population of Curtin think of the risky new Actibumps.

So, what are Curtin students with cars at risk of damage to do about the new Actibumps? Potential workarounds for this diabolical system are as follows:

Cover this section of road with metal plates or wood planks as stated in confession #8116,

Cement the Actibumps shut,

Weld them, so they are unable to move or,

If any information technology students or other computer-based degree students wanted to hack into the edeva Live program, that would be greatly appreciated.